


Nothing Intentional

by TraceyLordHaven



Series: Next to Nothing [3]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21601009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TraceyLordHaven/pseuds/TraceyLordHaven
Summary: "We are going to hash this thing out, once and for all," B’Elanna replied.  "I am tired of it.  I was tired of it five minutes after we made it home from the Delta Quadrant.  I was tired of it every time I saw you or saw Chakotay, or saw the two of you at the same time desperately trying to ignore each other. ... And now that Seven is dead, I am tired of being tired of it.  Tom and I made Chakotay face some truths he didn't want to last year.  Now we are going to do the same favor for you."
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway, Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres
Series: Next to Nothing [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556821
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34





	Nothing Intentional

**Author's Note:**

> This series started as a one-off. It's become a more-than-one-off.

The ballroom at Starfleet Headquarters had been full of celebration for most of the night, but Kathryn Janeway had remained slightly pensive, to her own irritation. Walking along the side of the dance floor she headed to the front of the room, to the end of the raised platform holding the head table. She climbed a couple of the steps - not actually on the dais, but high enough that she could get a good look at the room.

"Has it really been sixteen years," she wondered.

Sixteen seemed a strange anniversary to celebrate. After their initial return to the Alpha Quadrant, the homecoming galas had been annual. After the fifth, though, with people spread further and attendance dwindling, they had changed to bi-annual. After the second one of those, the unofficial event planner, Tom Paris, had decided that they should only be held when something of note happened. 

The recent promotion of Harry Kim to Captain and his subsequent assignment to the Titan had seemed reason enough for a celebration. The other significant developments among the Voyagers had been sad - there had been four deaths since the last major gathering three years ago. Vorik and Megan Delaney had both been killed in an explosion on Deep Space Five. Susan Nicoletti had been in a climbing accident on Earth and died after two weeks in hospital. And, of course, there was Seven.

It was still strange for Kathryn to look around the room at the people assembled and not see Seven there. Not see her there with Chakotay.

Kathryn hadn't seen or heard from Chakotay since that day he came to her home north of Point Arena. She'd left him sitting on her deck, unwilling to spend any more of her time subject to his wallowing. She had been scheduled to head out on a six-month diplomatic mission to former Neutral Zone colonies a week later. But despite the certainty she’d tried communicating to him, Chakotay’s visit had made her antsy. So she decided to pack that night, close up her house, and head to Starfleet a few days early.

The trip to the colonies had been a success - three of the worlds she visited had been accepted for probationary membership into the Federation since then. She supposed she should have felt some sense of accomplishment, but she really just felt … there.

On that trip she's become acquainted with the Trill ambassador and had quickly fallen into a “relationship” with him. He was a powerful advocate for the Federation, an exhilarating debate sparring partner, and a fairly decent lover. She knew she should have cared for him in some fashion - their pairing looked very good on paper - but with him, she only ever felt just … there.

And now, looking around the room at the people she'd led and suffered for, who she would have given her life for, and the spouses, lovers, and children they had all collected in the last sixteen years, all she felt was just … there.

"I can say I am present," she thought to herself unemotionally.

The crowd shifted slightly and she saw Tom and B’Elanna sitting at a table with an irritated-looking Miral and an amused-looking Harry Kim. Kathryn stepped back down to the floor and made her way to them.

"Admiral, so good to see you" Tom said, rising to salute her.

Kathryn rolled her eyes, "Aren't we beyond that?" and she pulled him to her for a hug.

"I certainly am," B’Elanna said, smiling. She shoved her husband out of the way and grabbed Kathryn for an enthusiastic bear hug.

Harry stood up next.

"I think this is the only venue where I can get away with hugging instead of saluting" he said as he approached the Admiral.

She poked his shoulder before hugging him, too

"It simply wouldn't do for me to be seen hugging my favorite new captain while on duty," she said, her voice somewhat muffled by his uniform.

Releasing Harry, Kathryn looked at Miral.

"Miss Paris, you look lovely this evening, how are you?”

Miral put on a slight smile.

"I'm good Admiral," she said. Then looking sideways at her parents, she mumbled, "But I could be better."

B’Elanna rolled her eyes and huffed "She wants to go out with Naomi Wildman and some of the other newly-minted ensigns to a club."

Kathryn raised her eyebrows, asking "Oh, did Naomi invite you out?"

"No," Tom answered for his daughter, "She didn't invite Miral, but Miral desperately tried to invite herself."

Miral said nothing and slumped further down in her chair, her arms crossed, a scowl on her face.

Harry nudged Miral’s shoulder and pointed across the room.

"Hey, isn't that Reg Barclay over there? Have you seen him since he got back from the Delta Quadrant with Neelix?"

Seeing the quirky engineer, Miral brightened while her parents exchanged sly smiles. Kathryn looked down to hide her own grin. 

It was well-known among the Voyager family that when Miral was acting out, sending her to Reg Barclay was an ideal solution. Fortunately, he welcomed her presence. One of the strangest friendships to come from the whole Voyager/Delta Quadrant experience was the adoption of Commander Reg Barclay by Miral Paris. Each thought the other was a genius. They were decades apart in age but twins in intellect. Reg, being an honorary member of the crew and a known engineering expert, had become fast friends with the Paris’s when Voyager returned. He quickly became Miral’s favorite honorary uncle. The two of them had developed a verbal shorthand that observers found bewildering. 

Reg had become a great resource for Tom & B’Elanna. When Miral started going through typical teen rebellion, Reg had been a great calming presence and always pointed her back to her family. And Miral had spent years trying to get her "Uncle Broccoli" (the unfortunate nickname he’d had on the Enterprise had become a beloved term of endearment from Miral) to expand his social life. She had been instrumental in his meeting his wife, Elaine. 

"Uncle Broccoli! No, I haven't talked to him! I am dying to know how his slipstream upgrades are going, I'll be back in a little bit," and she headed towards his table.

Kathryn took Miral’s abandoned chair.

"Harry, I had a chance to see the recommendation Will Riker wrote in support of you getting the Titan, it was quite something," she said.

Harry smiled modestly, "I am having a hard time believing it. When Captain Riker was promoted to Admiral last month, I really had no idea he would recommend I take the ship, I only served as his first officer for three years."

Tom raised a glass and said, "They couldn't have chosen any better. Here's to Captain Kim!"

B’Elanna raised her glass, and Kathryn quickly poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table so she could raise a glass also.

Harry blushed a bit and said, "I had good teachers. No one better than the people at this table."

Smiling at him affectionately, B’Elanna asked, "Where are you off to first?"

"We actually will be travelling the old Cardassian border a lot," he replied. "We’ll be checking on the resettlement work on some of the old colony sites and be looking for other planets that are now ready for similar attempts.”

Tom raised his eyebrows.

"Wow, you are headed into old Maquis territory."

An uncomfortable silence fell on the group. Maquis. One word that took them all very far back, very quickly. Images flashed in all their minds - the Badlands, the Caretaker, the Val Jean, angry confrontations, an uneasy peace, lost friends, etc. Then each of their minds' eyes landed on the same face.

Chakotay’s.

B’Elanna sighed.

Harry looked around the group slowly, then asked, "Has anyone heard from him? Since Seven died?"

His three friends each looked at their drinks.

Kathryn finally spoke up.

"Well, I saw him shortly after Seven died. But it wasn't anything significant. Just a brief 'hello.'"

Tom and B’Elanna looked at her in surprise.

"Not significant?" Tom asked a little sharply.

Kathryn looked at him, brow furrowed.

"What do you know about it?" she asked coolly.

"Enough to know it was significant. Very significant," Tom countered.

Kathryn looked at B’Elanna.

"Chakotay came to see us a few days after he went to see you, Kathryn," she said.

"And he told you … what exactly?" Kathryn asked.

"Everything. He told us everything. By the way, Naomi made Miral a quilt a few years ago, too. Thankfully, she hasn’t figured out it can be used to hurt people," Tom replied.

Harry, looking uncomfortable, started to push away from the table.

"I probably don't need to hear this," he muttered.

B’Elanna, her fingers pressed against her temples, said, "No, Harry, please stay. If we are going to do this, and it looks like we are, it might be good to have a slightly-more neutral observer to keep us all in line."

Kathryn frowned.

"And what exactly is it we are going to do?" she asked.

"We are going to hash this thing out, once and for all," B’Elanna replied. "I am tired of it. I was tired of it five minutes after we made it home from the Delta Quadrant. I was tired of it every time I saw you or saw Chakotay, or saw the two of you at the same time desperately trying to ignore each other. I was tired of it every time I tried to help Seven understand she deserved so much more than either you or Chakotay were allowing her to have."

Kathryn sputtered, "Allowed her to … what the …."

B’Elanna's voice rose over the Admiral’s.

"And now that Seven is dead, I am tired of being tired of it. Tom and I made Chakotay face some truths he didn't want to last year. Now we are going to do the same favor for you."

She turned to look at her husband.

"Go to the bar. Get a bottle and four glasses and meet us in the ladies' dressing room.

\-------------------------------

As B’Elanna stalked into the dressing room and Kathryn warily followed her in, Harry stammered.

"I am not comfortable being in here. I've had my Captain's pip for about a minute-and-a-half, and now I am going to be charged with trying to … I don't know … do something in a women's rest room."

"I'll cover for you, Harry" Kathryn said, not taking her eyes off of B’Elanna. "You are here on my authority, possibly as my witness."

"Witness?" Harry asked.

Kathryn sat on one of the dark pink, overstuffed chairs.

"It sounds as though I am going to be tried for some crime against Chakotay, I might need a character witness."

"Your character isn't what's being questioned," Tom said as he walked in carrying two bottles and a stack of glasses, "your actions are."

Harry sighed and watched Tom walk past him.

"What is going on here. What happened? Why are we even talking about this? I thought we all had an unspoken agreement to never bring all of this up."

"Yeah, well, a lot of things that were always 'understood' never really happened the way we expected." B’Elanna said, looking at Kathryn. Kathryn looked right back at her with pursed lips and a set jaw. 

B’Elanna snorted.

“The death glare doesn’t work on me anymore, Admiral, I am mother to a teenager.”

Tom handed Kathryn a glass of whiskey, which she knocked back in one shot.

"Tell me what you think you know," she snapped.

B’Elanna took a sip of her drink and leaned forward towards her former captain, the woman who she and Tim had honored with their daughter’s middle name.

"I know you refused to go see Seven when she was dying. I know when Chakotay went to see you shortly after, you shut him down before he even had a chance to finish asking you for another chance. I know you told him you would never have love in your life again, and that it was his fault."

Kathryn’s eyes had widened with every sentence out of B’Elanna’s mouth.

Tom added, "And you did all of that on top of how you treated him in the Delta Quadrant."

Kathryn’s jaw dropped at Tom's statement. Flustered, she waved her glass towards B’Elanna and said, "That's not what happened, not really, but I'll come back to you."

She turned towards Tom.

"What was wrong with how I treated him in the Delta Quadrant?"

'Everything was wrong with how you treated him!" Tom replied, exasperated.

"I take it we are discussing the Commander?" asked the Doctor as he strolled into the dressing room, Neelix right behind him.

Harry looked at them entering the room and asked, "Did someone make an announcement?"

Neelix smiled and said, "No, we just happened to see B’Elanna and the Admiral storm out of the ballroom with smoke coming out of their ears, with you, Mr. Kim -- or should I say Captain Kim, congratulations by the way -- with you following and looking pretty nervous, and Mr. Paris running to the bar to get a bottle of the strongest spirits that Starfleet bartender would let him have. The Doctor and I conferred and agreed that, as you like to say, Tom, ‘it was about to hit the fan’ and thought we should participate."

When no one immediately said anything, Neelix inquired, "The Chakotay is about to hit the fan, am I correct?"

B’Elanna smiled. Tom shrugged. Kathryn groaned.

Harry asked, "You knew we'd be talking about Chakotay?"

The Doctor responded, "There are very few topics that could make those two," and he pointed at B’Elanna and Kathryn, "so angry, make you," and he pointed at Harry "so nervous, and make him," and he pointed at Tom "go on a desperate hunt for mind-altering substances. The Commander is top on that list. And it's a very short list. In fact, it has only one topic on it."

He sat on a wine-colored, velvet-covered ottoman and added, "I have observed all of you my entire existence."

B’Elanna shook her head slightly and said, "I guess the more the merrier? Tom, I think you had the floor."

"I did," he replied.

He looked at his former captain and declared, "Everything was wrong with how you treated him there."

Kathryn held out her glass for a refill and said, "I think I am going to need you to be a little more specific than that."

Tom poured a little more into her glass, and filled his own glass. He raised it towards Kathryn and said, "You got it, Admiral." He emptied his glass in one swallow and leaned back into the sofa cushions.

"You know, I don't think we had been out there for more than a week or two when I saw how he was falling for you - and a couple of days after that, I saw how you were using it against him."

"How the hell was I using anything against him?" Kathryn growled.

"Oh, come on," Tom said, rolling his eyes. "All those little touches? The way you said his name? Your every interaction with him was dripping with lust."

He changed his voice, trying to affect a feminine whisper.

"'I'll bet your spirit animal is a bear, Cha-ko-tay.' 'Can I have your stick, as I bat my eyelashes at you and then impress you with my skills as a hustler?' 'If I ever have any questions about mating behavior, I know who to ask, Commander, and, by the way, would you like to check out my ass while I lean over this console?'"

Now everyone in the room stared open-mouthed at Tom as he continued.

"You were leading him around like your little Maquis puppy. You put yourself out there as though your affection was a reward he could earn so long as he did everything you asked.”

Tom eyed her appraisingly.

“If you had just been appealing to his hormones, it wouldn't have been so bad - captains use every tool at their disposal, and we all know you needed him to follow you. But he would have done that anyway, he wasn't an idiot, not about survival in the Delta Quadrant, anyway. You could have shut down any hint of flirting, he still would have been the perfect first officer you needed."

Kathryn didn’t speak. Tom sighed and leaned forward.

"What made it torture for him was the fact that he fell in love with you within minutes of meeting you. You were some kind of unspoiled, Starfleet goddess to him, all conviction and strength. You were the embodiment of the virtue he'd lost faith in. I bet he actually heard violins play every time you walked into a room back then."

He chuckled bitterly and shook his head.

"You used it against him, Kathryn. He had found one good thing to believe in again – you – and you used it to try and control him."

Harry looked at the Admiral. She appeared to be shaking - he couldn't tell if it was misery or anger.

Neelix spoke up, "Tom, I think that's a little harsh."

"I'm not sure about that," the Doctor said. 

They all looked at him

"I had a chance to observe many interactions between the Captain and the Commander in those early years, particularly when one of them was recuperating in Sick Bay. It was obvious to me that no one was quite as tactile with Commander Chakotay as you were, Admiral. I think you had your hands on him more often than I did, even when I was giving him an exam. And no one else touched him as often as you. Kes and I discussed it several times, as I recall."

The Doctor got up from the ottoman and moved to lean against the sofa, next to B’Elanna.

“Kes used to ask me if I thought you knew the effect you had on the Commander. It didn’t take a tricorder too see how he was impacted by your presence. Increased heart rate, rapid breathing, pupil dilation, and so on. I recommended she review the material on human sexual attraction if she wanted to understand what was going on. But the first time you were injured and brought to Sickbay unconscious, and he stood by you bed holding your hand and staring at you, as though he could just will you back to health, Kes and I both realized it was so much more than hormones. He loved you.”

Neelix nodded.

“I remember Kes asking me if she should tell you she thought your flirting was actually hurting Commander Chakotay. I advised her to leave it alone – perhaps I shouldn’t have.”

Kathryn, still trembling, was staring at the floor.

"I wasn't … it wasn't just flirting … I didn't … my feelings for Chakotay were …," she stammered.  
B’Elanna reached over and placed her hand gently on Kathryn's arm.

"What were your feelings for him, exactly," she asked softly.

Kathryn looked up at B’elanna, her eyes wide and watery.

"I … cared for him, very deeply," she replied quietly.

But B’Elanna was not satisfied with that answer.

"Were you in love with him?" she persisted.

Kathryn suddenly stood and started pacing the room.

"I couldn't be in love with him!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't be in love with anyone there! I could barely remain in love with my fiancé, I could only love my mission! I could only love the goal of getting everyone safely home!"

Now Harry stood and looked at the Admiral with great empathy.

"B’Elanna didn't ask if it was appropriate to be in love with him, or a good idea to be, she asked if you were in love with him," he said softly.

Kathryn stopped walking. She had on hand on her hip and the other on her mouth. She looked around the room, looking each of the five friends in the eye.

She sat on the ottoman, closing her eyes.

"Yes, I was. The Kathryn part of me fell very quickly, very hard. But the Captain part of me resented the hell out of it."

This actually made sense to them all. There had been no real “off” time for anyone on Voyager – trying to live both personal and professional lives on the ship had been challenging for everyone. And it must have been nearly impossible for their Captain.

Kathryn continued.

“I guess I was flirting, but it wasn’t to manipulate him, or it wasn’t totally that. I flirted because I liked it. I liked him. He made me feel … I don’t know, like I was more than just a uniform and pips. It made me feel connected to him, not captain to first officer but Kathryn to Chakotay.”

"Did you ever think of telling him that?" Neelix asked.

Kathryn threw her hands in the air in frustration. 

"What could I say to him? 'Chakotay, we are running low on emergency rations, by the way, I am incredibly attracted to you and might actually love you'? Aside from the fact that it was completely inappropriate for a captain to get involved with a subordinate, and aside from the fact we were barely surviving those days, it didn't make any sense. I don't fall in love like that. That's not who I was."

Harry shook his head, "What does that mean?"

Kathryn sighed, "I had two great loves in my life up to that time. I knew my first love, Justin, for months before I felt anything other than contempt for him. He had to rescue me from the Cardassians before I would even consider liking him, much less loving him. When he died, I thought I had died, too. It took months - years, really - before I could think of another man. But Mark hadn't just been some man I met randomly, he had been a friend since childhood. An annoying kid who bothered me on the playground. He grew into a close friend after Justin died, and that friendship slowly grew to love."

Kathryn looked at Harry, then the rest of the room.

"That’s how I fall in love, slowly, after getting to know someone. After dozens of meals and conversations and experiences together. I don't fall in love in love at first sight, or even the hundredth sight."

B’Elanna tilted her head, smiled slightly, and said "I think we all saw evidence to the contrary."

Kathryn looked at her for a moment and then nodded, a tear slipping from one eye.

"OK. But what could I have done about it? Nothing."

She reached for the bottle next to Tom and filled her glass again. She took a long drink.

"It was hell," she said, sniffling. 

They were all quiet for a moment.

“But did you ever consider it was hell for him, too? A hell he had absolutely no power to change?” Tom asked, his voice gentle and quiet.

As that comment pulled a sob from Kathryn, her five friends felt their own hearts break a little for her. And for Chakotay.

The sobs continued. The rest of this conversation would have to wait.


End file.
